"For the 83 percent of the world that does not have easy access to
the Web via PCs, IBM is helping mobile phone users become more
productive. In these locations, there is a dearth of skills, such as
technological and language literacy; a lack of infrastructure, such as
reliable electrical power; as well as limited availability of
smartphones.

IBM Research has established a pilot program in
southern India that allows people, including farmers, repairmen, small
business owners, and consumers, to post, retrieve or exchange timely
information via voice on cellphones. Content -- such as weather and
ocean conditions, grain prices, advertisements, bus schedules, news,
class schedules, product catalogues, health information and available
services appointments -- is created and updated by entrepreneurs and
municipalities."

So what does this mean to collaborating smarter? Well for starters, anytime anywhere access and interaction with people, information sources, content...

This could translate
into millions of dollars in savings at many large companies that are
looking for financial relief in the current economy.

Can import Microsoft Office 2007 files into Symphony

Offers DataPilot Table improvements that make it
easy to drill down and analyze data

Enhances mail merge and
envelope printing for organizations that need simple, efficient ways to
communicate with their customers

Provides animation
to add sizzle to presentations and interoperate with Microsoft
PowerPoint presentations

Allows
users to drag-and-drop plug-ins, extending its use to other business
applications. For example, a new learning plug-in can be installed on
the right sidebar to help people learn new Symphony capabilities in
real-time use

Cluttons

"Reducing
fixed costs in challenging times is important to Cluttons, a
partnership of chartered surveyors, founded in 1765. Through a network
of offices in the U.K., Europe, Middle East, South Africa and the
Caribbean, Cluttons offer a very wide range of professional property
management, agency and consultancy services across the commercial and
residential sectors, for both investors and occupiers. In recent years,
Cluttons delivered Microsoft Windows desktop, including Microsoft
Office, IBM Lotus Notes and business applications to its users via a
virtualized environment based on Citrix. Now it plans to switch from
Office to Symphony, used with Lotus Notes 8.5.

Mark Clemence,
Cluttons IT Director, stated, "The opportunity to use fully supported
office productivity tools as part of the deployment of Lotus Notes 8.5
was too good an opportunity to be missed. We plan to use the cost
saving to further invest in Lotus productivity tool sets."

John Lewis Partnership

Another
Symphony customer, The John Lewis Partnership (JLP), owns the leading
U.K. retail businesses Waitrose, John Lewis and Greenbee. All 69,000 of
its permanent staff are partners who own 27 John Lewis department
stores, 210 Waitrose supermarkets (www.waitrose.com), an online and catalogue business, johnlewis.com (www.johnlewis.com), a direct services company, Greenbee (www.greenbee.com), a production unit and a farm with nearly £6.9 billion in revenue in 2008.

JLP
was determined to control costs within a competitive retail environment
to deliver first-class service and products to John Lewis customers. It
plans to deploy Symphony to approximately 8,000 employees. Providing
Microsoft Office to all staff in John Lewis Department Stores was
evaluated, but determined to be cost-prohibitive."

Equally important becomes the question: how can we make Villages smarter so that maybe more people can be living in the villages. Here is a discussion I have started on this targeting a little state Kerala in India and how we can lead change...

"Under Microsoft's planned enterprise licensing rules, businesses that
buy PCs before April 23, 2010, with Windows 7 preinstalled can
downgrade them to Windows XP, then later upgrade them to Windows 7 when
they're ready to migrate their users. But PCs bought on or after April
23 can only be downgraded to Vista -- which is of no help for XP-based
organizations, Silver notes -- and could cause major headaches and add
more costs to the Windows 7 migration effort."http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/microsofts-looming-windows-7-licensing-disaster-xp-users-639

"Both Forrester Research and Gartner advise clients to wait 12 to 18
months after Windows 7 ships before adopting the new OS, so they can
test compatibility of their hardware and software, as well as ensure
their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. But Microsoft's
six-month downgrade restriction for XP means that the businesses that
chose not to install Vista have to rush the migration process. Or they
can spend extra money and enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance
program, which then lets them install any OS version at the price of
the extra yearly fee (about $90) per PC."

IT needs to work through several other issues when figuring out its Windows 7 migration strategy, Silver points out.

Microsoft has yet to make public the details of its
Technology Guarantee program or even say if there will be one that
covers business purchases. The Technology Guarantee program gives free
upgrades to Windows 7 on PCs purchased after a certain date. That's
crucial for businesses that plan to adopt Windows 7 soon, so they can
time their hardware purchases to avoid paying for a Windows 7 upgrade
shortly after buying a PC shipping with Vista.

Even if
applications designed for XP or Vista run on Windows 7, that's no
guarantee that the software vendor will support them on Windows 7.

These days “free” open source sounds appealing, but not every open
source alternative delivers the desired business results. Join
Forrester Research analyst Matt Brown to learn why it’s important to
think beyond license fees when evaluating a portal solution – and why
IBM customers choose market-leading IBM WebSphere Portal over open
source portal alternatives.

"The IT team originally tried building a new e-commerce system based on a Windows platform, but the solution did not meet Discount Tire’s performance, reliability and stability needs. Additionally, Discount Tire’s use of IBM Lotus Domino Server was a critical aspect of its daily ability to meet business demands. Previously running on Windows, the lack of reliability and consistent downtime of its Lotus software was critically impacting its day-to-day operations.

"The new community enables companies to gain real-time access to IBM
subject matter experts to support sales leads and client
implementations. Partners can also create personalized profiling tools
to develop online communities that make their skills visible to other
partners, connect with them on new technology innovations and joint
sales leads and develop and deliver new technologies online through
interactive forums before test-marketing or taking offerings directly
to clients" http://finance.yahoo.com/news/IBM-Launches-New-Social-prnews-15478032.html?.v=1

"Based on Lotus Connections, IBM's enterprise networking and
collaboration technology, PartnerWorld Communities enables members to
collaborate through a secure network that connects people around a
focused task or goal using blogs, forums, private teaming spaces for
solution design and market planning activities, social bookmarking and
RSS feeds for real-time access to key topics of interest"

a record 20,000customers
attended Lotus events this year, an increase of 39 percent worldwide
over 2008.

State Bank of India has agreed to
the largest installation of Notes and Domino 8 e-mail and collaboration
software in an emerging market to date, and the largest Lotus deal in
recent history. The software, installation and maintenance package,
which will enable the bank to communicate more effectively on-line,
will eventually be used by 300,000 bank employees, more than three
times the number who currently have access to e-mail. It will allow
them to better exchange information through Web 2.0-enabled instant
messaging, file and folder sharing, bulletin boards and discussion
forums.